


Kinesthetic

by tielan



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Tactile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:31:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Co-pilots are frequently tactile with each other – a function of the Drift bond, of the physicality of piloting a Jaeger together. Arms and legs and bodies and heartbeats are difficult to separate, even after the neural handshake is ended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kinesthetic

**Author's Note:**

> **melonhead315** left a prompt for Mako/Raleigh 'possessiveness' over on my tumblr, and this is what resulted. There's a bigger fic around this idea, but I couldn't resolve it to my satisfaction, so this is all you're getting for the moment.

His hand brushes by her nape as she rises slowly out of slumber.

His fingertips press into the small of her back as he herds her away from the reporters, refusing to answer the shouted questions.

His palm flattens against her knee when she tenses at the sheer impoliteness of interviewer’s question about her ‘favoured position’ with _sensei_.

* * *

The rain cascades down in sheets and the blowing winds yank the second umbrella out of the aides hands and into the grey fog that made for a hellish descent. Mako doesn’t need to look at Raleigh to know what he’s remembering – they’re both recalling it.

_Sensei’s_ absence stings for a moment.

Mako forces the ache away.

“We’ll share,” Raleigh says, and ducks under Mako’s umbrella, closing his fingers around the handle, his hand engulfing her own. Not the comfort of _sensei_ but a comfort nevertheless.

It means walking close, but they never miss a step.

* * *

She finds Raleigh on the beach, sitting where he came to shore all those years ago. If she concentrates she can imagine the broken, shattered visage of the fallen Jaeger in the churning surf, and in spite of the warming air that portends spring, a shiver slides through her bones.

He reaches up for her hand without looking, and she lets herself be drawn down to sit between his knees so he can wrap his arms around her waist and press his cheek against her nape.

Drifting, _sensei_ once said, was about common experience – not merely the physicality of the disciplinary exercises, but the matching of pilots’ emotional and psychological scars without either pilot falling into the other.

He still misses Yancy and he always will.

She still misses her parents and _sensei_ and she always will.

Sitting here in the twilight, their ghosts surround them, walking past on feet that leave no prints – only the faint warmth of love remembered.

And Mako rests one hand on the arms around her waist, and rubs his knee with the other, comforting and content with the heavy heat of him at her back and around her.


End file.
